Preserving the Poetry of the Willow Glen Community

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Featured Reader, July 2015

Jim Russo was the featured reader of the WGPP July meet. Christine Richardson had this to say of him by means of introduction:

Tonight’s featured reader has been a frequent participant in the open mic portion of our Third Thursday evenings and a faithful contributor to our blog. But Jim Russo has not made the trek over the Santa Cruz Mountains for several months. We now know the reason. As he stated in the bio announcing his reading, Jim has been working the posterior region of his body very hard, actually, he claims, of , in order to publish 3 chapbooks ready for his presentation tonight. And now he will be the lucky recipients of his grueling, body reduction workout, or rather, output. Jim was born in San Francisco and migrated down the coast to Santa Cruz County in the early 60’s. I guess you would say he was born for the stage, whether acting in plays, some of which he wrote himself in order to act in them, or in front of a microphone reading his poetry. Poetry, Jim says, is his expression of ­choice. Its relative brevity and directness align with his temperament: says what he has to say and moves on.

He is a narrative poet, and his new works are part memoir, part criticism. Jim lives his life boldly and confronts the world he lives in with the same vigor and challenge.